"Government guilty"
"Government guilty"
That's the banner headline in today's News Sentinel. Today's front page is plastered with news stories about yesterday's verdict in Editor Jack McElroy's lawsuit against Knox County Commission; the only story on the front page not about the verdict is this one about the city suing the county over the storm-water issue, and even that story is tangentially related to yesterday's outcome.
Today's paper includes a total of five news stories on the verdict, plus a chronology of events, an editorial on the verdict, and Sam Venable's column about the subject. The five news stories are:
Collectively, these might suggest that the paper is gloating or piling on, but I don't personally see it that way. Yesterday's verdict was the biggest news in local government in my lifetime, so it deserves this kind of coverage. In my opinion, the News Sentinel earned the right to gloat a little.
I've read each of those five articles a couple of times now; believe it or not, I have nothing negative to say about any of them. Their tone is objective, they avoid editorializing, and they stick to the facts of yesterday. That detached, objective stance lets the story tell itself; the avoidance of bias in the coverage makes today's paper an indispensable record of the sea change Knox County government underwent yesterday.
Today's paper is good stuff.
For many years, local government and local politics have been given relatively short shrift by local media, with the news tending more toward state, national, and international stories. As the news industry continues to evolve, I believe newspapers will find that there is indeed a strong market for news about local government and politics. Many other local stories in the past have deserved broader coverage than they received; I hope that the public response to this trial convinces local media that people really are concerned about the things their government is doing in their names.
Recent years have seen a dramatic expansion in the choice of news sources the public can access; this puts tremendous pressure on newspapers to find relevance in a world where the latest national and international news stories are only a mouse click away. Instead of focusing on national and international news, I would love to see newspapers focused almost exclusively on local issues, stories about which are not as readily available from competing news sources.
Pardon the digression; those issues are broader than the coverage of yesterday's verdict. I just think the coverage in today's paper could form a template for future coverage of local stories, even those not prompted by a lawsuit filed by the paper's editor. For instance, I'd like to see this depth of coverage on the local candidates as the primaries approach early next year; I'd like to see this kind of coverage on issues like the storm-water controversy, which has been festering for nearly seven years. The current mess surrounding the zoning of Knox County Schools also deserves this kind of treatment.
Among the many lessons to learn from this trial, I would hope the paper could begin to realize that they do in fact have a strong and under-served market for local news. They've certainly proven they have the capacity to cover it with depth and breadth.